I am the author of a book called The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason
The title is an obvious contradiction.
It's intentional and obvious.
And there are a lot of geniuses that have pointed out to me that
hey, this is a contradiction.
You know, they never complain about the movie Back to the Future, for some reason.
"The Atheist Muslim," though, really gets to them.
The thing is, there are millions — and that's shown by polling data — there are millions of
atheists, agnostics, secularists, freethinkers in the Muslim world, living in
in Muslim-majority countries right now who have to publicly identify as Muslims.
If they speak up against it, if they express their views openly
They'll get disowned by their families
they'll get marginalized by their communities
they lose their friends
they can be imprisoned
they can be executed
Atheism is punishable by death in 13 countries around the world, all of which are Muslim-majority countries.
And the cost of them coming out publicly, speaking their views, and shaking off the Muslim label
are really, really — the consequences are really dire.
So, these are the Atheist Muslims.
There are a few who've spoken up about it
Like there's Raif Badawi, who's a blogger in Saudi Arabia
who started a website called "Free Saudi Liberals"
that spoke about secularism.
They threw him in jail. He's serving a 10-year sentence,
and he's been sentenced to a thousand lashes
and he's been separated from his family and his children
simply for doing exactly what I do —
— which is write — write about secularism — and his activism
There are bloggers in Bangladesh
who have been hacked to death in the streets
by Islamic fundamentalist lunatics
simply for writing what they thought.
So there probably are more
there are probably many, many more
but they don't want to suffer the same fate
so you're not going to hear from them
we don't hear from them.
I have received — if I showed you my inbox — I have received thousands and thousands of emails
and messages from
atheists — closeted atheists — in Egypt, in Malaysia, Indonesia
Saudi Arabia
Bangladesh, all of these countries
and I hear from them all the time.
When I was writing the book, they would tell me, can you please say this
can you make sure you mention this, or that
because I can't say it here.
So there are definitely a lot of them.
And just to put numbers on it
these are probably still underrepresented
There was a Gallup poll recently, a couple of years ago
that showed that Saudi Arabia
the birthplace of Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran
19% of people identify as non-religious there
19%. To compare, that same number is 15% in Italy.
In Saudi Arabia, 5% of people identify as confirmed atheists.
And in the United States, that number is also 5%.
So Saudi Arabia is a population of about 20 million people
That's one million people in Saudi Arabia who identify as confirmed atheists.
Saudi Arabia enjoys — it's really fascinating —
if you live there — and I lived there for 12 years —
It's basically like the Taliban with a lot of money.
They're oil-rich. We all want what they have.
We've seen Trump bowing to the Saudi king,
we saw Obama bowing to the Saudi king,
we saw Bush holding hands with King Abdullah and walking down, I mean
these pictures are everywhere, they're sword dancing with them
This is a country where women can't drive.
I'll just leave it there. Women cannot drive in this country, legally.
But there is an alliance, everybody has an alliance with them. They're thought to be the moderates
whereas a lot of the other Middle Eastern countries, most of which are
inarguably less religious than Saudi Arabia, overtly
are considered extremist in many ways.
So there is a distortion of how these countries are represented
in the world just based on how politically important or how strategically important they are
to people in the West, and
I think a lot of the UN appeasement probably has to do with that as well.
"Islamophobia" is a misnomer.
"Islamophobia" does not make the distinction between legitimate criticism of Islam and anti-Muslim hate
or anti-Muslim bigotry.
That's a very important distinction.
Islam is an idea. It's a set of ideas in a book.
Muslims are people. It's an identity. It's a group of human beings.
Criticizing ideas moves societies forward.
Challenging ideas moves societies forward.
Demonizing people rips societies apart.
And human beings have rights. Ideas don't.
The word "Islamophobia" does not make this distinction.
When we say "anti-Semitism,"
we're not saying "Judaismophobia."
We're saying "anti-Semitism" because bigotry is against people. You can't be bigoted against ideas.
And when it doesn't make that distinction, it's actually a very — a very sinister term
Because it actually takes the pain of genuine victims of anti-Muslim bigotry
and exploits that
for the political purpose of stifling criticism of Islam.
Do Islamic fundamentalists use the term "Islamophobia"?
They don't just use it. They love that term.
Because they can exploit it to censor people.
They can say that if you have any kind of criticism against Islam, you're being bigoted against us.
They'll even say you're being racist against us
which doesn't make sense because Islam is not a race
Nobody's born pre-circumcised, nobody's born with a hijab on their head
This is not — you can convert in and out of Islam, you can't convert in and out of a race.
But they — the word "Islamophobia" gives them a chance to make racism and genuine criticism of Islam, an ideology
It gives them an opportunity to conflate the two.
One thing that I get a lot from white Western liberals is
is that they'll read something I wrote
they'll hear a talk that I did, and
they privately message me, they say, "I agree with you"
"I wish I could say what you just said"
"But I can't, because my family would call — everybody would call me a racist, and
and they'd call me an Islamophobe, so I can't say it, I'm a white liberal guy
so I'm just really glad you're saying it."
Someone — I just spoke to somebody on — a few days ago, Armin and I
did an event at the University of Toronto and somebody came up to me afterwards
and they said, well, "You know, I really like Sam Harris —
but whenever I see something he writes, I just don't share it, because then everybody on my friends list
is going to pounce on me. But when you do it — when you say the same kind of stuff,
I can share it, because you know, you come from the Muslim world, so
so it's okay, nobody bugs me about it."
And that's a problem.
That is not just shy white liberals.
That is how terrorism works.
Terrorism is not just a bomb blast, or people dying, or dead bodies
Terrorism is every time a newspaper decides not to print a Charlie Hebdo cartoon
even the day after over a dozen cartoonists there got murdered in the name of Allah
Terrorism is every time you hesitate from speaking up about what you think
just because you think you might offend somebody.
Terrorism is when you say, "I'm not going to criticize Islam because it might radicalize more Muslims and turn them against us."
When you say that, you're not curbing terrorism. You've become a victim of it.
Get online.
Maryam Namazie, who is founder of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain,
she said that the Internet is doing to Islam
what the printing press did in the past to Christianity.
And that's true. I was — I was an atheist / agnostic going back and forth for a very long time
I never really talked to anybody about it
you know, I would just troll my family and friends sometimes
But later on when I found out there were so many others like us
You know, we're having events like the one Armin and I
did at the University of Toronto that I'm talking about
That is something that cound not be done in the days of Salman Rushdie.
Salman Rushdie had to go into hiding for years
and this is just a couple of decades ago.
And we've come a long way from there.
And a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are more
and more people speaking up, there are more people in these countries
whose governments just can't censor them anymore.
And they're connecting with other people around the world.
This exchange of ideas has essentially gone viral, and I think
I think it's fantastic, and I would tell people who are trying to escape the clutches and people who are trying to find a voice
or if you're a Western white liberal who has these private thoughts that you don't want to say
when you're seeing everything on your TV because you don't want to be called
what I say is, you're "Islamophobophobic"
You don't want to be called an "Islamophobe," you're too scared of that
then reach out — get online — you'll find people who think like you.
And you'll find a platform, you'll find an audience.
And that's the only way to change things —
— we've got to fight ideas with ideas, not walls or bombs.